


Try

by thesearchforbluejello



Series: Normal Jobs [2]
Category: Whiskey Cavalier (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance, but they're all au characters, can someone please explain to me why I'm suddenly obsessed with these aus, everyone makes an appearance okay, someone please save me from myself or these are going to keep happening, there's like a LOT of references to The English Job and previous eps here so at least that's good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-27 02:52:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18295385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesearchforbluejello/pseuds/thesearchforbluejello
Summary: Sophie takes the job for a reason, but that doesn't stop things from getting complicated.





	Try

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where this came from. What I do know is that I belatedly realized this title is the same as a John Newman song that suits this in a scarily accurate way.

He answers on the third ring. “What’s wrong?”

“I need your help with a job.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line and then, “You… you’re calling me… because you need help on a job? Sophie, you’re fucking kidding.”

She knew this was a bad idea. “I’m not.”

“You said-- you told me you was out.” She hears something slam on the other end and knows he’s kicked the door closed behind him. 

“Don’t upset her,” Sophie snaps. “Listen, I need your help. I could've called somebody else, but I _didn’t_. I called you. Do you want in or not.”

“No,” Rick says. 

She tucks her hair behind her ear. “If you want in, come to _La Rêve_ at ten. I've got an interview.” She hangs up on him. 

*****

Part of her is surprised to see him, a brief passing moment of comprehension that yes, he did come, yes, he is really here, before it fades into guilt because of course he did. He always did and nothing that’s happened in this disastrous past year has changed that yet. 

They make eye contact across the open floor of the club where it drops down to the first floor below and she nods to him to join her. 

He settles beside her where she’s leaning on the railing and mirrors her position. “What,” Rick says over a remix of _Despacito_ , “no ‘thank you’?”

She doesn’t rise to the bait. “I’ll thank you when we’re done.” She surveys the floor without looking at him even though she can feel his attention on her. “Where’s Sarah?” 

“With Jeff.” Sophie nods. Rick shifts beside her so his hip is against the railing. “Soph, we should talk about this.”

“What’s to say.”

“You told me you was out of this.”

She turns at that and takes a step forward that was meant to be aggressive but she’s misjudged how closely he was standing to her already. It’s not the first time. “That’s some fine hypocrisy. And what business is it of it of yours?”

“How can you even ask me that? And besides, you called me in on this.” She rolls her eyes. “Don’t roll your eyes at me, Sophie. We have been through all of this before, and--”

“Don’t lecture me,” she spits.

“You have more important things to think about, both of us do, _you’re_ the one who told _me_ that, and--”

“Oh, and now that you’ve got this new job, whatever it is, you think you can lecture me? Sure, makes a lot of sense, don’t it. Just because you got out--”

“I’m not trying to lecture you, I’m trying--”

She thumps the back of her hand against his chest as she turns back toward the floor. “Shut up. That’s Bruce, down there.”

Rick looks back over the railing. “Great.”

Bruce moves to the second floor and they watch as he leans against the railing on the opposite side, much as they were a moment ago. “Okay. You stay here.” He makes a face. “Just, have my back.”

“That’s why I’m here,” he says as she turns away, disbelief in his tone like he can’t believe it wasn’t obvious to her. She smiles even though she knows she shouldn’t, because she can’t help it, and his eyes soften.

She moves around the curve of the balcony and approaches Bruce from behind, coming to stand next to him at the railing. He has two guys flanking him and she sees them watching her. “Bruce, right? Sophie.”

“Sophie,” he says slowly. “You come recommended.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“I’m not sure you’re the best pick for the job, whatever Liam might say.”

Sophie snorts. “I’m always the best pick for the job.” 

Bruce looks over her shoulder and Sophie turns just as one of the two men reaches out to grab her. She slams the heel of her hand into his throat and puts him in an arm lock; as he doubles over she slams her knee into his crotch and drops him to the floor.

The other man lunges at her and suddenly Rick is between them, elbowing the man in the face.

Sophie looks at Bruce. “Liam said you were looking for some muscle, too, so I brought him along,” she says, jerking her head toward Rick.

“Muscle,” Bruce mutters. “Looks like Captain America to me.” He shakes his head. “Fine. Meet them behind the club at three, after closing. They’ll take you to the site and bring you back here when it’s done. You get paid when the job’s done.”

“Fine,” Sophie says with a shrug. “I’m sure it won’t take us very long, will it,” she says, looking at Rick beside her.

“Can’t imagine it would, no.”

“Be on time,” Bruce says.

Sophie snorts and they walk away.

“Captain America,” Rick scoffs once they’re out of ear shot. “Do I sound American to you?”

Sophie just rolls her eyes.

*****

“Captain America,” Rick scoffs again as he digs around the bottom of his cup for the last of the ice cream.

“Just let it go,” Sophie says.

“I can’t believe he said that.”

“Oh my god, you just can’t let anything go, can you.”

The night is warm, for London, and the city is bright as they walk along the river. “Never could with you, could I.” He tosses his cup into a bin as they pass. 

“You make it sound like it was my fault.”

“No,” he says, and the resignation in his voice makes her stop. “It was both our faults.” He turns when he realizes she’s no longer besider him. “It was,” he says again.

“I know. That’s just the first time I’ve heard you say it. To me, at least.”

“And I don’t think you’ve ever said it at all.”

“I…” she starts. “I know. That it was.” He shakes his head. “It was,” she insists, taking a step toward him, “both of our faults. It takes two to ruin what we had.”

“I wasn’t the one who left,” he says. 

“You just said we were both to blame!”

“Because I never should’ve let you leave!”

“Like you could’ve stopped me?!” She throws her cup in the bin with as much force as she can manage.

“That’s not what I mean!”

“What do you mean then?!” she shouts, turning back toward him.

“I shouldn’t have made you want to leave!” He shakes his head. “I know, I _know_ that you don’t trust anyone, but you trusted me and I let you down. I said I would stop taking jobs, and I didn’t. But you promised me, too, and yet here we are.”

“You came of your own volition.”

“I did, I did, because I’m trying to do the right thing, the right thing for you and the right thing for Sarah and sometimes that’s the same thing!”

Sophie wants to tell him. She almost does, right then, because he looks so honest in the fragile, pale light of the streetlamp beside them. She can’t though, not yet, but she resolves to tell him after the job. His brows furrow and his lips quirk just enough for her to know that she’s telegraphed her thoughts onto her face and he knows she’s just made a decision. She knows he hasn’t guessed exactly what she’s hiding, though, because there’s still confusion on his face, not revelation. She looks at his mouth, almost against her will, and then the alarm on her phone chirps. 

“Time to go,” she says. Rick follows.

*****

Rick watches her carefully as they drill the safe. Sophie can feel Bruce’s guys behind them and knows they’re there not to help, but to make sure that she finishes the job. 

The bit pierces the casing and they withdraw it. Rick sets to dismantling the dril so it can be put away as Sophie starts on the dial.

The two men draw towards the door for a hushed conversation. “If I didn’t know any better,” Rick whispers to her, standing so close his chest is against her shoulder, “I’d say you look a little out of practice.”

The safe clicks and Sophie pulls the door open. “Good thing you don’t know any better, innit,” she says. 

They step back and she helps him put the drill back in the cases. She watches as the guys empty the safe and when they start photographing the documents she notices that Rick is watching too.

“Okay,” one of the two guys says, “let’s go.” Rick and Sophie grab the cases and move to follow them toward the door. 

“No,” the other guy says to Sophie, “not you.” Before she’s sure what’s happening a gunshot is ringing in her ears and she’s pressing a hand to her side and drawing it away bloody. “We don’t work with feds.” Her knees buckle and as she hits the floor of the office she thinks that this is the danger of taking this kind of job: you never know who you’re working with. These guys didn’t know she wasn’t taking this job for herself until now, apparently, and she doesn’t know how they found out, though if she had to guess she’d say it has something to do with their hushed conversation from a few minutes ago. They also don’t know that Rick was a sniper in the armed forces, a fact they discover when he pulls the pistol from under his jacket and kills the man who just shot her with three shots to the chest. She pulls her own and kills the other man as he moves to fire on Rick.

She lowers her gun and rests her head back on the floor. “Sophie,” Rick says, and he’s on his knees beside her, pulling her jacket aside to assess her wound.

She’s starting to hyperventilate but she grabs the lapel of his jacket and forces him to look at her. “Get the file,” she gasps.

“What?”

“Get the file!” She shoves a hand against his chest to push him away.

“Why?”

She grabs his jacket again and he helps her sit up. “Because I’m working for bloody MI6 and they need to know what information Bruce was after!” 

Rick sits back onto his heels, still holding her up. “You’re working for MI6.”

“Yes,” she snaps. She’s shaking and she knows shock is setting in. “If you don’t hurry up I’m going to pass out before I can send them the file.”

“Sophie,” Rick says, “ _I’m_ working for MI6.”

“You what?” she says, not sure if she’s misheard him through the ringing in her ears. 

“This is so balled up,” Rick says, and moves away to fetch the file.

Sophie presses her hand against the wound and the pain of that contact makes her vision go white. Rick jostles her as he returns, kneeling on one knee behind her so she can lean against his chest. She wipes the blood off one hand on her jeans and digs her phone out of her pocket. “I was tasked with getting on Bruce Miller’s crew,” she says, typing with numb fingers. “They know he’s after something in all of these robberies, they just aren’t sure what. Guess it was this.” She photographs the pages and send them through a secure connection. When she’s done she slips the phone back in her pocket. She tilts her head back against Rick’s chest and looks up at him. “Why were you sent here?”

Surprise flashes across his face. “I wasn’t.”

“What?”

“You called me. I’m here because you called me.”

“But-- you could lose your job. If they knew you were here. Do they know you're here? When did you even start working for them?”

“Sophie,” he says, readjusting his grip on her and rousing her fully awake again. “I was approached after you left. I accepted. You wanted me to get out, and I did. Don’t worry about me being here; they picked me because I lived this life.”

“Me too. The recruited me after I left too. Said I was wasting my skills. ‘Spose I was. I told you I’d get out.”

“Sophie,” he says, pressing his hand over hers on her side and jolting her back awake, “stay with me, love.”

She laughs. “This is worse than I thought,” she says.

“What?”

“I thought you called me ‘love.’ You haven’t called me ‘love’ since I left.”

“Doesn’t mean I stopped loving you.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I didn’t stop loving you either.” She rests her head against his shoulder and lets herself relax against him. “I left a letter for Sarah. In my safe. If I die, give it to her, when she’s older.”

“Absolutely _not_ ,” Rick says. “Let’s go.” He shrugs his jacket off and rolls it up before tying it around around her waist. As he pulls it tight she cries out with a half-contained whimper. “Come on,” he says. He picks her up and carries her out of the office, stepping over the bodies of the two men they’d killed.

“I do trust you,” she says. “It’s why I called.”

“I know,” he says. She grips his jacket a little tighter as he kicks the door open with his toe and steps out of the house. 

“You’re gonna steal their truck?” she says.

“Is it stealing if they’re criminals?”

“Yeah. You’re gonna have to break a window.”

“Nah. I stole their keys.” He readjusts his grip on her legs to open the door. She grabs the handle above the door and he manages to shove her less than gracefully into the seat. He checks the position of his jacket tied around her. She watches his hands as he adjusts it. Her jeans and shirt are dark with her blood and it’s already spreading into the fabric of his jacket. “You're really bleeding,” he says, voicing her thoughts. She looks up at him and sees concern in his eyes. “I see you every Wednesday,” he says, “and every other weekend, and somehow I’ve still missed you.”

She’s never been the one good with words; that’s always been him. Instead she puts one hand over his where it rests over the knot in his jacket and reaches up with the other to trace her thumb along his jaw. He leans in and kisses her, very gently, in exactly the way she knows he knows always drove her crazy. It takes her a moment to open her eyes even after he breaks the kiss and when she does he’s smiling at her. He kisses her on the forehead and shuts the door.

*****

After twenty minutes of Rick swearing at traffic, they make it to A&E. Sophie blinks hard at him as he opens her door in a vain effort to focus on his face. He says something to her but the words are so indistinct she dismisses the thought of even asking him to repeat it. He says her name a couple times but she just lets her head rest back against the seat again. He lifts her arm across his shoulders and pulls her out of the truck.

He kicks the handicap button to open the doors and starts yelling as soon as he’s inside. She can’t make much sense of the noise but Rick lays her down on something and holds tight to her hand as the ceiling lights rush by. The last thing she feels is that pressure on her fingers.

*****

Sophie wakes up to a pounding headache, a bad taste in her mouth, and Rick’s smile.

“Hey you,” he says.

“Hey,” she says. Her mouth is dry and she licks her lips. He hands her a cup with a straw in it and supports her hand with his own as she raises it high enough to drink from. 

“How are you feeling?” he asks as he sets the cup back on the table.

“Like I was shot and passed out from blood loss.”

“Hm. Yeah, understandable, except ‘could’ve died from blood loss’ is a little more accurate. And considering that was sixteen hours ago.”

She frowns at him. “Don’t really feel well-rested.” He smiles at the joke and looks almost surprised that she’d said it. “You don’t look like you slept either.”

“Haven’t. Suzie brought me some clothes, but no, I haven’t slept.”

She wiggles over a bit, as best she can, and pulls at the blankets. “Come here.”

He settles in the bed next to her, propping himself up on his elbow. “We should talk,” he says.

“I hate it when you say that.”

“I know.”

“I just woke up,” she says, staring at the ceiling.

“You seem plenty awake to me.”

“I’m sure they gave me some pretty strong drugs.”

“If you forget I’ll just tell you again.”

She sighs, turning her head on the pillow to look at him again. “Don’t say something you’ll regret later.”

“I could never regret you,” he says.

She’s taken aback by that and knows it shows on her face when he visibly withdraws.

“I’ve had a whole year to think,” he says. “And today sixteen hours more. I carried you in here and that was _not_ the way I ever imagined carrying you over a threshold.”

“Rick, don’t.”

“Don’t push me away.” He’s holding her gaze and she can’t look away. “We need to sort some things out. Somehow we ended up on the same page again and I don’t know how we got here and we need to sort that out. But that can come later. I just-- I just want us to try.”

It’s reflexive fear that she feels. “Try?” she says.

“I know neither of us feel safe, not yet. And I know we don't exactly have normal jobs, but… even if we’re consulting for MI6, it’s not like we’re running around saving the world. We should try to make this work. I know,” he says, before she can answer, “that we’ve worked really hard to make things as easy as possible for Sarah, both of us have. And she’s fine, great even, because she’s as stubborn as me and as bold as you. But I think we owe it to ourselves too.”

“What do we do?” she asks.

He takes her hand. “We’ll take Sarah out for ice cream. And then we’ll have Jeff or Suzie watch her and we’ll go to dinner. We’ll learn how to connect again.”

“Without tequila this time?” she laughs.

“Well, I’m not going to complain about what tequila eventually gave us, but no.”

“Time to confront it?”

“Yeah, love,” he laughs. “I think we’re overdue for that, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” It hurts to laugh, even through the drugs they've given her, but it feels more like a blessing than an annoyance.

“Daddy!” Rick turns towards the door and gets body slammed with thirty pounds of three-year-old. 

He rolls her onto the bed with him so she’s laying on his chest. “Hey, Monkey,” he says. 

“Mumma!” she shouts, forgetting to control her volume in her excitement. She throws her arms around Sophie’s neck and buries her face against her throat. “Uncle J said you weren’t feeling okay; are you feeling okay now?”

“Much better, sweetheart, thank you.” Sophie smooths a hand over Sarah’s braids.

“We brought her to see Rick, but since you’re awake we thought we’d stop by,” Suzie says. 

“Thank you,” Rick says.

“I’m glad to see you’re okay,” Jeff says to Sophie.

“Me too,” she says. 

“You know they don’t even have sandwiches in the cafeteria?” Rick laughs and Sophie knows there’s only one American who’d be visiting her in the hospital, a theory that’s confirmed when Eddie steps into view. Judging by Suzie’s face, this is an ongoing argument.

“We have another hour before we have to leave,” Rick says. “Why don’t you all go get dinner? We’ll be okay here.” 

“I’m cool with that,” Eddie says, already turning down the hall. Suzie snaps something at him in Spanish that Rick is glad she didn’t say in English with Sarah in the room.

“We’ll be back later,” Jeff says before turning to follow them.

“Can I stay?” Sarah asks, looking at Sophie with familiar green eyes. 

“Yeah, sweetie, of course you can.” Sarah hugs her again, nestling her face into Sophie’s shoulder. Rick shifts on the bed, running his hand along Sarah’s back. He leans forward and presses a kiss to Sophie’s cheek; when he leans back he’s smiling and she is too.

They’ll try, and this time she thinks they might actually succeed.

**Author's Note:**

> So I obviously have zero idea how shared custody works in England, nor do I have even the faintest idea how MI6 works, but here we are anyway. I do know this is the least in-character piece I've done for this show, but I was basically possessed by this story and forced to write it. I actually had to pick a name for Rick, and he just... seemed like a Rick, so, well, there he is. To be quite honest, I don't even _like_ kid!fic so I really just don't understand where this came from. I hope you enjoyed it anyway.


End file.
